Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Electricity Infrastructure

Energy & Environment

Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Electricity Infrastructure

Economic Development Research Group for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

For the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), EDR Group prepared a four-part economic report series, showing the economic consequences of continued underinvestment in our Nation's infrastructure, and the economic gains that could be made by 2020. Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Electricity Infrastructure, the third report in the series, discusses EDR Group's assessment of the long term economic consequences of current electricity infrastructure investment patterns and funding levels. There is a growing gap between needs and available infrastructure, and the study examines ways that households and business will face higher costs if sufficient electricity generation, transmission and distribution systems are not available in the future.

Based on current investment trends, the national electricity infrastructure gap is estimated to be $107B by 2020, or just over $11B per year. By 2020, shortfalls in grid investments are expected to account for almost 90% of the investment gap with nearly $95B in additional dollars needed to modernize the grid. Closing the electricity investment gap would lead to fewer brownouts and blackouts and save US businesses $126 billion, prevent the loss of 529,000 jobs and $656 billion in personal income losses for American families.

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